Shadow and Sunlight
by skyewardfitzsimmonsphilinda
Summary: A fic based on a tumblr user's idea of what Ward went through, as well as my own headcanon of the Garrett/Ward relationship.
1. Out of the Shadows

_Los Angeles, January. It's dark, and there's a boy with blood on his knuckles and a little brother clinging to his hand. _

"_He won't hurt us," he tells the younger boy, but the child just shakes, sobbing. "Not ever again." _

"_Is he dead?" the little one asks. _

"_I hope so," the boy lies, but his hands are shaking, so he clenches them into fists. _

"_I don't want you to fight like him," the little one says, looking up at the older boy. _

"_I can fight better," the boy says, but no matter what he says, he cannot stop this night from being dark. _

_Chicago, January. Three years later. It's dark, and there's a boy, a teenager now, with blood on his knuckles and a little brother who's in a foster home now. _

_It's never been this dark, and the boy has a gun in his hand this time. He tries to remember the days of two brothers, or even farther back to the days when there was a father whose eyes lit up when he saw his boys and a mother with a laugh like sunlight. He tries, but the memories flee, and the boy is left in the darkness of a forgotten alley, holding a gun to his forehead. _

"_Don't." _

_A man steps out of the shadows into a space lit up by a flickering streetlight. _

_The boy points the gun at the man's head without a second thought. _

"_Grant Ward?" _

"_How do you know me?" the boy snarls. _

"_Don't do this kid," the man says. He's middle-aged, bulky with muscle, and the lines of his face could be considered hard except for the way he looks at the boy. He reaches out his hand slowly, and then pulls the gun from Ward's loosening fingers. "The name's John Garrett, by the way. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D."_

_And when Grant Ward looks back on the night he almost died, he remembers it as the day he was rescued. _

He was the youngest agent to be admitted to the academy, and it was all because of Garrett. It was always because of Garrett.

The man had written him a letter of recommendation, had used words like "potential" and "gifted" and "the future of S.H.I.E.L.D." to describe Ward, and Ward had felt his throat clench with emotion.

Training was brutal—Garrett was an upper-level agent, but had requested the job of training Ward—but it was worth it.

Ward spent three years learning from Garrett. They were housed in a remote S.H.I.E.L.D. base, far from the Triskellion and the bureaucracy that S.H.I.E.L.D. had become, and Garrett had taught him everything. Hand-to-hand was first, of course, and Ward flushed with pride when he saw the admiration in Garrett's eyes.

"Kid, you have more natural talent than the rest of the academy combined," Garrett told him, and Ward vowed to train even harder.

One morning, Garrett came down to find him alone with the punching bag, at four in the morning. "Hell, kid, you need to get some sleep."

Ward shook his head, his fists flying. Five years ago that day his brother had been taken out of his care and put into a foster home—five years ago Ward hadn't been able to fight all of them off—five years ago Ward had been too helpless to save his baby brother—

Larger, rougher hands closed over his, forcing them into stillness.

"I'm not going to tell you not to feel," Garrett said slowly, and Ward burned with embarrassment at the tears welling in the back of his eyes. "The heart does what it does. But I'm going to make sure you're never weaker than your feelings. You only have to say the word."

"Yes."

"It will be hell."

"I was in hell before. I can handle it."

It _had_ been hell. Espionage tactics were the worst—knowing your cover, living your cover, even when hands were on your throat, choking out your breath, even when you could hear someone's fists breaking your bones, even when you'd been held under water so long you almost wanted to take that lung full of water.

Garrett's methods were unorthodox, certainly, and Ward lived every day knowing that S.H.I.E.L.D. was never to know about them. Meanwhile, he was growing stronger, faster, smarter than any other S.H.I.E.L.D. specialist, something which Garrett watched with pride.

I was three months into his practical training when the news came in that they were assigned their first mission together. Garrett found him in the basement of their S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, practicing his hand-to-hand against four agents armed with tasers and widow bites.

"Hey, kid."

Ward flipped the last agent, disarming him and sending him flying against the wall, and then turned to face Garrett. "Yes, sir?"

"Upstairs."

"Will it be part of tactical, sir?"

"No, kid," Garrett said, slapping a hand on his shoulder and grinning down at him. "We just got assigned our first mission."

Ward was successful, mostly, picking up fast on unfamiliar languages, reading body language. What's harder for him, though, is playing a part, maintaining a cover.

It's the first time he sees Garrett truly angry with him.

_Manhattan, January. It's still dark, but he's not a boy anymore, and the blood on his knuckles has been neatly scraped off… _

His mission is going well until he finds it, a yellow, sickly alley. _The _alley. Ward feels sick to his stomach with the memory, the memory that suffocates him. It's nearly as bad as the memory of the well, when he began to understand the power of rage; a power that burned both the giver and receiver.

He was playing the part of a customer for a deal in supposed alien weaponry, popular since Thor first fell from Asgard and made people aware of other worlds.

Ward hesitates a second too long, slips up on a few words, and the whole thing is blown.

It takes two tact teams and a sniper to finish the mission, and Ward is devastated.

Back at their hub, when Garrett has stopped making phone calls, when the other teams have departed, he faces Garrett alone.

He doesn't say anything.

He doesn't deserve to speak.

"I trusted you to handle that."

Ward stares at the ground, whispers, "Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir." And despite his height, Grant Ward has never felt so small.

"You can't just know your cover," Garrett says, and the sound is closer to a snarl. Gone is the respect always in Garrett's voice when he speaks to him, gone is the admiration, and Ward is beginning to realize he would do anything just to get that back. "You have to live it, breathe it."

"Yes, sir."

"You have to _bleed_ it!" Garrett spits, grabbing Ward's shoulder roughly and dragging him forward.

"Yes, sir."

"Are you ready to do that?" Garret shoves him backwards, and Ward collides with the wall.

"Yes, sir. Please, sir."

And then Garrett is hitting him, over and over again, his jaw, his nose, his eyes, his ribs, and Ward doesn't even raise his hands in defense.

Garrett is saying something, something about strength being achieved only through pain, how this was all to make him stronger, but Ward blocked it out.

_No, it's because I deserve it. I deserve it. I deserve it. _

Ward wakes early the next morning. It's his bruised ribs that wake him, when he rolls over and wakes from one nightmare to find that he still has to live with last night. _I failed a mission. I failed _him_._

He makes breakfast in the tiny, barely-furnished kitchenette. Uses his own supplies to make a breakfast for Garrett. And when Garrett appears in the kitchen, Ward just says "thank you" quietly and goes downstairs to train harder, hoping that the agents he spars with will find a way to get in a shot at those aching ribs; that they will add to the swelling of the bruises on his face.

Ward wouldn't make the same mistake again. He learns espionage until he has passed every S.H.I.E.L.D. test, until he has the highest marks since Agent Romanoff—Garrett just calls her the Spider—and he knows, beyond a doubt that, yes, he doesn't just know his cover, he lives it, breathes it, bleeds it.

And on one of those days off, when Garrett takes him for drinks and tells him stories about the days when Fury trained him and a man called Phil Coulson, Ward thinks he might finally be going in the right direction.

And then Garrett asks him, looking at him sharply over his beer, "Would you die for S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

Ward answers without a second thought, "I would die for _you_."

And the smile that spreads across Garrett's face makes Ward feel as if every moment he has spent in training is finally worth it.

The word "Hydra" isn't spoken until Ward proves himself once again—this time on a mission in Hungary, where S.H.I.E.L.D. orders a strike on a facility with Garrett still inside, and Ward ditches his orders and carries Garrett's unconscious body out of the building over his shoulder, amid gun fire.

And when Garrett finds out later, he smiles, that same odd, charismatic smile that gives Ward purpose, and tells him he's finally ready to play in the big leagues.

It's dark again when everything changes. When Garrett gives him his first real assignment, to join Phil Coulson's team and find out what he can about the miracle that brought him back from the dead.

_Los Angeles again, January. It's not dark this time, not even a little bit dark, as the boy who became a spy pulls open a van door and finds the one thing he could never have anticipated: a girl named for the light of the Skye, with no last name and eyes that make him nearly forget about the blood he has tried so hard to scrub from his knuckles…_


	2. Into the Light

Garrett and Ward are their prisoners now, and it cost them. Oh, how it cost them.

May had taken a bullet to the gut protecting Coulson, and Skye would have been captured if not for Ward's desperate, last attempt to save her. And Fitz, their little Fitzie, had been beaten within an inch of his life. It was Garrett who had done it, in an attempt to find out Skye's location, until Ward had stepped in and stopped him, Ward with his tortured eyes and bloody hands, Ward with a story that had broken their hearts.

Ward's story came out slowly. He didn't speak—didn't respond to anything—if Skye wasn't present. And when he told them about his brothers, about Garrett's rescue, about hell after hell, he didn't even have to tell them the rest.

It was Skye who guessed; Skye who, with all her mysteries, understood abuse the way the rest of them couldn't.

"When did he hit you for the first time?"

Ward looked up, his eyes dark with confusion, and then he stared down at his handcuffs again. "I was sixteen. Failed mission. Blown cover."

Skye's face darkened. "Did you tell him thank you?" she asked harshly, her tone cold and brutal, but her eyes swimming with tears.

"Is that what you used to say to Miles?" he asked softly, looking at Skye as if she was the only one in the room, and she knew she had her answer.

Coulson and May were staring at Skye in disbelief, but Skye ignored them.

"Was he the one who broke your ribs after the battle of New York?"

"How"—

"You wince when I touch you there…" Skye's face flushed slightly as she realized what she'd just admitted. "And you had nightmares after I asked you where you were during New York."

Ward wouldn't look at her.

"You felt like you deserved it," Skye said, her voice shaking with emotion. "You felt like it was the only thing that would drive the memories away. You felt like it was the only way to pay for what your brother had done to you and for what you let him do to other people."

Ward continued to stare at the ground, but Simmons was crying and Fitz was staring at the floor and Coulson and May had exchanged a look of complete devastation.

Skye wasn't finished. "He turned you into this," she said, her voice bitter.

"I made my own choices," he said quietly, but his voice wavered. "I just never made the right ones until it was too late."

"You're right," Coulson interrupted, his voice quiet but steady. "You made choices, Grant, and you'll have to live with them. But you're wrong about one thing."

Ward looked up finally, his eyes meeting Coulson's for the first time.

"It's never too late."

Surprisingly enough, it was Simmons who got to Garrett first. He was handcuffed in one of the Bus' interrogation cells, and he smiled arrogantly when she entered.

Fitz was at her heels, his face still too swollen to say much. Simmons didn't say much, either—just yanked the chair out from under him, and hit him, her fists clenched all wrong and tears streaming down her face as she tried to remember what Ward had taught her about self-defense.

Garrett barely flinched at her punch, but Simmons said sharply, with more venom in her voice than anyone had ever heard, "That was for our Agent Ward," she said, and then swung again, her small hand barely doing damage. "And that was for my Leo."

May and Coulson enter behind her, and Coulson draws Simmons gently back.

"Fitzsimmons, leave us alone for a minute," Coulson ordered, and as they left, Skye strode in, her face set.

She was on Garrett in a second, shoving him to the floor.

"You sick son of a bitch," she snarled, landing a well-aimed kick to his nose. "You ruined him."

"Oh, did he give you his sob story?" Garrett asked mockingly, un-phased by his now-bleeding nose. "Because I rescued him, Skye."

"You ruined every chance he had to be a good man," she spat through her teeth, but tears still welled unshed in her eyes. "You destroyed him, you manipulative bastard, you"—

She kicked him again, and then hit him, once, twice, three times. The way Ward had taught her when she was learning how to protect herself. "That was for the man Grant Ward could have been," Skye snarled, kicking him again.

May was the one who pulled her back, her hand gentle. "Don't," she said softly.

"He deserves it," Skye snapped, yanking her arm back, her eyes focused on Garrett.

"Yes," May said fiercely. "But you don't deserve to have blood on your hands because of him. So let me."

May was silent and unforgiving, and it was only when they heard a bone crack that Coulson pulled her back.

"Melinda," he said gently. "You don't deserve blood on your hands, either."

May glared at him. "He should pay for what he's done."

"Agreed," Coulson said. "But not like this."

"You can't save him, Phil," a smirk spread across Garrett's now-swollen face. "And you'll never have the guts to kill him. I know you. Forever on the fence, forever weak"—

A single shot rang out, and Coulson stood, holding the gun in a steady hand, his face set and hard but his eyes filled with emotion. "A friend of mine once said that if we can't save our world," Coulson began slowly, lowering his gun. "You can be damn well sure we'll avenge it."

Skye couldn't look at either of them, and when she had turned and left, and it was only May and Coulson standing beside Garrett's still body, Coulson sagged into the chair, his head sinking into his hands.

May stood beside him for a moment, her face twisting with emotion, and then she tilted his face so that he was looking straight up into her eyes. "Phil," she said gently, and she didn't have to say more. He leaned his head against her, his whole body sagging with the weight of what had been done.

"He's dead," Skye said abruptly when she re-entered Ward's cell, and he looked up at her as if he was uncertain how to respond.

"I know you're going to grieve for him," Skye continued, her voice thick with emotion. "And maybe the rest of the team won't get it, maybe May will be angry if you do, maybe Fitzsimmons will think you're crazy, maybe Coulson will beat himself up for days because he couldn't make this better for you, but I wanted you to know… I get it."

Ward stared at her for a long moment, and then he nodded slowly. "Skye"—her name was heavy on his tongue. "Skye, I know that you can't forgive me. I don't deserve it. I was the piece of the puzzle that never fit, and I made my choices, and I've accepted that. But you deserve to be happy. Of all the people I've met, you deserve that. So will you do that? Please?" Ward's voice broke.

"No," Skye said, and her voice was soft but unrelenting.

Ward swallowed hard and looked away.

"What I'm going to do is going to be hard and heartbreaking and it's going to hurt," she said. "I'm going to forgive you, because not once in your life have you believed you were worth it."

Ward's head jerked up, and then he shook his head. "You can't, Skye. I've done too much. To you. To this team."

"You're not going to tell me what I am and am not capable of, Grant Ward," she said fiercely. "Because I believed what you did. That I wasn't worth anyone's forgiveness. And you know what? Coulson took me back to this team. This team rescued me. And it's going to be god-awful, and you're going to pretend to be the tin man again to push me away, and some days I'll scream at you and some days I'll lose hope and most days you'll lose hope and I don't know if we're ever going to be okay but you can be goddamn sure I'm not leaving you here."

"Skye," he interrupted, and his voice was gentle. Strong. "Let me do one decent thing in this life of mine, and let you go."

"Do something for me, Ward," she said. "Let me have this choice. I'm sticking with you. And the answer is yes, I'm still very pissed off at you and you're still going to have to deal with what you've done."

"You shouldn't have to deal with it, too. Even if I ever make it past this, I don't deserve… I don't deserve your friendship."

"Sometimes the best gifts are the ones we don't deserve," she said softly, and she wrapped her arms around him. Ward tried to pull away, but her arms stayed around his shoulders, and slowly, tentatively, he leaned his head against her. "Because _when_ we get out of this, you still owe me a drink."


End file.
